Monday, January 31, 2005

Sorry for the delay in the last post.  I am considering moving my writing space to a new space on what else?  MSN Spaces.  Actually the new space is called Gil Chapman's Weblog, real original but the new space looks very promising so I want to direct you to it.  Gil Chapman's latest diatribes can be view here so good luck.  Same writing, very boring to the uninitiated but probably worth the effort.  Thanks, Gil. 7:49:01 PM    comment []

Thursday, January 20, 2005

As a group over the last two years we have worked on the business of creating an information system for the GTPS district that would enable the organization to take advantage as well as share the massive amount of data that has been generated in the past, is being generated today, and will be generated in the future.  In other words, make everything available to everyone anywhere and at anytime.  Big task, lots of ideas, many many willing participants, lots of work, nothing stuck.  Just maybe, just maybe, we have hit upon the right formula to accomplish what I had set out to do if we haven't got it exactly, we are oh so close.  We have tried many avenues toward getting this done, different versions of SharePoint, Manila, Moveable Type, Web Pages, and Wikis.  Nothing seemed to fit.  If you have read this column at all over the last year or so you may remember earlier posts aluding to my grandioise plan for this information system.  I really wanted it to be all things to all people and I still have that goal in sight, well maybe not to all people.  The base construct of the system was demo'ed to a group of would be users and they ate it up.  After all, information is king in the organization and the way to stay on the cusp of what is going on is to be connected to the information source.  If the source is not available and or not made available to the information consumers, well nothing good can come of it.  Debrief, debrief, debrief.  Document, document, document.  Distribute, distribute, distribute.  This are the 3 D's of information processing.  You won't find that anywhere else but right here.  The 3 D's concept is an idea that I have been developing over the last few years but until I heard parts of it through the ideas of others nothing really clicked and while it does appear to be common sense and it really is, organizations, especially educational institutions, just don't do it.  One of the people that has helped to conceive and devleop the system, Betty Garrity, has provided what will amount to the final piece in our attempt to build this information system and it is a link to the district's eboard system.  For those of you that don't remember eboards they are a web based bulliten board system that enables teachers to construct a web presence that they can use for effective communications with both students inside and outside the classroom as well as provide a parental conduit to whats going on in the classroom.  We have at present, a small version of our base SharePoint site up and running and while it looks good and the key features are working, it is the link to the new structure of the eboards system that will give it its real presence for the teaching staff.  Giving the teaching staff a real presence will ultimately lead to a better experience for our students which, after all, is what this is all about.   The new design will give us more structure and a common interface of which to build upon.  Needless to say I think everyone is excited about the possibilities represented in this new system and I will address those next.  Till next post. 8:16:10 PM    comment []

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Spent most of today working on finance and budget issues preparing for the GTPS Finance committee meeting this week.  I have most of the information put together to describe the transactions that are needed to take place in order to put the deal together for the new Xerox copiers into use at GTPS.  There are several reasons why the new copiers are a good deal but the most compelling is the cost factors and the savings that they represent to the district.  After all is said and done the costs to the district will reduce by about $1,000 per month for the life of the new agreement which will run for 60 months.  If I were to not renew and restrike the deal this month I would be paying the same lease payments over the next 30 months which is the remainder of the lease agreement in effect at present.  That would be an expenditure of over $30,000 that would be a constant cost.  I would then have to wait to either put together a new deal with Xerox or Canon at that time.  The $30,000 would have been spent on the current agreement instead of $30,000 less which actually results in a $60,000 gain for the district.  The rest of the term on this new agreement will net a $30,000 additional savings for the district for a grand total of $90,000 over the course of the new 60 month agreement.  However, it is easy to lose track of the real benefit of this new deal and that will be the following two negotiated points:  one, unlimited copies for the four larger elementary schools, we made over 3,000,000 copies off the existing units this past 11 months and we have paid over $15,000 in excess copy charges for the right to make those copies.  Not any more.  In addition, we are going to be able to put a brand new color production system into the central office that will enable us to double our output and significantly increase out level of color output for the many and various school projects that we do during the course of a school year.  This is a great deal for us and hopefully with the addtion of all the new Canon copiers as well as the upgrades to the new Xerox units we will have put the copier problem to bed for the next 60 months.  At that time both contracts will come due and we will be able to negotiate a combination type of new agreement either between the two vendors or have a sole source for the districts copier compliment.  Between Canon and Xerox we will have cut approximately $250,000 off the cost of copiers in the district over the next 60 months and we will have significantly  increased our capabilities in this area.  The thing I am most excited about is the increase level of color copier and printing production that we will be able to produce for the customer base.  We have used the present system to death and it will continue to work but the production quality will be limited.  The next piece is to put a better spin on what we will be able to produce for the schools.  That will be a project for the spring. The next few weeks will be spent primarily on the budget.  Everything from a video production on the budget to some line by line number crunching till its wrapped up.  I will be working on some cross referencing spreadsheets to determine if we have everything covered. I also have to put together some numbers justifying the switch from the pagers to the new Nextel units.  Once the Nextel units are up and operational we will address the actual increase in effciency that we can gain from their use.  I will also need to send back the pagers and try to recoup a refund on the $2,800 we had spent on these units.  I will work on putting a better explanation on the cost / benefit on the use of the one to one communications.  Till next post. 7:49:18 PM    comment []

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Had an interesting day unvieling a systems plan designed around the retrofit of the Municipal complex's data systems.  I have been working on a plan for the past two weeks that would completely overhaul the present system and turn it towards a viable entity based on the processing needs that are required for today's information requirements.  Sounds very sophisticated but not really.  This is tried and true data processing design.  Start with the infrastructure and build your way out.  The better you prepare for the transport mechinism the better the overall design of the system.  I have always overbuilt on the cabling plant and I still really don't believe in wireless connections so my advice is always to lay the most wire that you can and then find a couple of more spots to wire some more.  It will be no exception with the city complex either.  First off, will be the building of a fiber backbone shaped in a star topology that will accommodate the data transport and allow no one connection to be more than once removed from the fiber.  We also will be building a new tech center that will house the new server systems for the complex.  The center will tie in all the fiber connections as well as enable the installation of new drops in several areas of the complex.  The City, Police, Construction Office, etc. will be connected on this net as well.  There will a couple of "outside" connections as well and they will be used to connect the Senior Citizens Offices as well as the budget office in the front of the complex.  The Police Department will also be connected through this system for both email and server systems.  There are some new systems designated to be placed into operation in the near future that will also be housed in the new center.  This first cut of the cabling plant design was very inclusive but still we will need to fully construct a site map that will give us every location, numbered and identified throughout the complex.  Off this site map I will be able to ensure that all connections will be up and operatonal and most importantly, always lit.  The server systems are the next to flush out and since they will be run the bulk of the operations in the complex I will wait till the next post to go into more detail about them.  Suffice it to say that I am excited about this project.  It really will help to regenerate my interest in this type of project again since I am mostly relegated to more administrative duties this time of the year.  One of the nicest things that I have seen in the past few months was the site of a classroom full of second graders using one of our new lab areas today.  Now there were some happy campers and their teacher told me they were not only having fun but they were learning the number system off of a math web site that he had decided to use since he now had access to the necessary equipment available for their use.  Till next post. 8:53:03 PM    comment []

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

A bit closer between posts this week since so much has gone on in the past three days since the start of the year.  First off, we have made some progress with our Team Services site.  We have sites setup to deal with Public Information, Technical Services, Curriculum Department, Instructional Technology, Human Resources, and the TAT committee along with all their sub groups.  I had gone back to our original systems design as far as who would operate and own the main site.  Joanna Babcock is our Public Information Officer but actually performs the duties of the Communications Department.  While there actually isn't any communications department we are working in that direction over the next year or two so it is a logical choice to have her handle the SharePoint site.  She also is the Eboards Manager as well as the district's website manager.  http://www.gtps.k12.nj.us is a widely recognized production that serves both the "inside and outside" communication needs of the district.  She has worked on the SharePoint project from its inception and she has been witness to quite a few failed attempts over the past few years and while that could have been a stumbling block in her inclusion in the latest incarnation, it hasn't.  I am sure she will do a creditable job managing the use of this new and potentially "information changing" system for the GTPS district.  Along the way towards implementation there will be many in the district that will be called upon to be not just readers but contributors to the system as it grows and becomes the backbone of the information distribution task for the district and I hope everyone embraces the potential of this system.  It will be like seeing the "forest through the trees", (what really does that mean?) I have not had much time in the last week to put that much time into the SharePoint site but I did take a few minutes to uncover some additional features that I was not aware were available in this release.  First off is the use of the Meeting Space function.  How many times have we been called to a meeting that was not very well planned out?  I have been to them and unfortuneatly, have held them as well.  The use of the meeting space gives the participants a means by which to plan and coordinate all the various tasks needing to be accomplished in order to have a successful meeting.  There are ways to manage attendees and make sure they get on-line invitations, there is a direct connection to the public outlook folders and thier calendar functions so that particpates can check the public folders for meeting times and dates.  In addition, there are objective and agenda sections for the obvious as well as the ability put in links for applicable web or intranet sites and each meeting space can have its own separate document library which will contain all the compiled documents needed for the meeting.  Take a second and try to imagine a meeting space with complete preparation in all these functions.  Then imagine if those that will be attending the meeting have taken the time to review all the necessary information pertaining to the meeting.  What a wonderful world this would be.  Think of what could actually be accomplished in that meeting the possibilities are endless and in the end this type of preplanning can be a real stimulus in the effort to boost productivity.  I am testing out the meeting space function for our joint Curriculum and Technology Meeting scheduled for next week.  The actual meeting will be conducted in our conference room with the projection system so that we can fully utilize the meeting space and everyone will actually be involved. Another section of the system that I have just slightly tested is the Picture library and I quickly was able to populate a small library with some drawings that I had done for various projects we have accomplished over the past two years.  Since they were Visio files I had to convert them to JPEG in order to view them in the thumbnail function but they came across crystal clear and there is even a slide show function available within the picture library that will play the slides in a PowerPoint fashion.  There is a flimstrip option as well and I have not had a chance to test that out with some video clips yet but I have asked the Instructional Technologist, Betty Garrity, to put some of the instruction videos up on the site for testing purposes.  The files that they have created in that area contain a number of AVI, WMV, Camtasia, and some WAV files that will fully test out the system.  I have asked them to get the information on-line by next Tuesday since that will give me at least two days to work on the sites in order to get prepared for the rollout. The real gem of this system is of course the document library and its ability to maintain the mountain of information that is being produced each day.  I often have felt that I mostly alone in my feelings about this debriefing problem and the lack of an audit trail for the many various formal and non-formal functions that take place during and in document production.  I am delighted with what appears to be a fully functioning library for any and all types of documents within the district.  The diamond in this not so rough terrian is the searching aspect of each of the document librarys will open up the flow of information within the district.  I had described document management as the "physical distribution of intellectual property".  While that intellectual property may or may not belong to the district in its entirity (not for me to decide) it will now be available to everyone who takes place in the informaiton system within the district.  I will work on putting together a more comprehensive review of the document library during the next few posts. There is another big project looming this spring and it involves the Municipal complex at Galloway Township and the complete revamping of their computer system for all of the departments within that organization.  It promises to be a great project with some very clear goals in sight and what will be a very much needed advance in the computing power of the Township. On a final note, I wanted to thank everyone once again who participates in this little endeavor of mine.  This is great therapy for me and it gives me a way to "debrief"  myself each time I sit down to post some thoughts.  I have gotten responses of all kinds with this blog, some supportive, some critical, some questioning.  Trust me, I appreciate each of them, good or bad.  I have received some off the wall comments on the writings as well.  That is what this little message is about.  If spending time dummying up email accounts and actually writing some of the dribble that I do recieve in the form of a comment from a select few is your idea of a good time well then, have at it.  Even at my supposed expense especially at my expense.  Till next post. I have not had much 7:36:03 PM    comment []

Monday, December 27, 2004

One of the projects that seemingly has been put on hold forever has been the full fledged attempt to incorporate the Microsoft Team Services into the daily mix at GTPS.  I really think that the blame for not having moved toward progress in this area lays at my feet.  I can attribute this primarily to my stubborness with regard to the basic formulation of the Intranet.  I have been trained in the early ways with regard to software systems design always with a push toward the classic top down approach.  Starting with a global access point and allowing the user to drill down towards their ultimate destination within the system.  Remember, when I wrote software we had to separate everything into three separate but equal systems, input, process, and output.  Needless to say, that has completely changed.  I have made the change on the hardware side to distributed systems and back again so I made it through that but for some reason as much as I have felt the change I really haven't made it over to the scrambled side of systems development.  Not any more.  Thanks to a great gift from Gary K. this Christmas coupled with some quiet time over the holiday weekend due to some bad weather I have seen the light or at least I read about it.  The book is called Microsoft SharePoint 2003 "Unleased".  It was written by Lynn Langfeld, Colin Spence, and Michael Noel and it is published by SAMS.  The introduction to the book states the following " Organizations have been talking about knowledge management and leveraging their IT investments to enhance team collaboration for years but have had difficulty implementing effective solutions that tie together the wide range of information people need to access."  Isn't that the case.  In the GTPS district we sorta have a "one size fits all" approach to data.  While this leapfrogs what is available in most districts it does not fit in to my plans for the long term.  We are beginning to make extensive use of the "X" drive and as the staff learn about it more and more it is now time to put together a more cohesive system of information distribution.  I have been discussing this with the Curriculum Department and it would appear that utilizing the system as its author's had intended is exactly what is necessary.  Smaller not larger groups or departments or whatever is what is called for.  Document libraries based on smaller functions with multiple links to separate the disciplines and subject matters is what we will strive to produce.  I forsee multiple departmental websites where the staff can not only store but collaborate on in process work or anything else that can help the instructional process.  Debriefing and many to one distribution ratios is what I am after with this project.  The following two paragraphs outline it better than I: " Information Technology has helped facilitate this collaborative effort through electronic documents that could be saved in a central location, and accessed by different individuals, as well as through the creation of databases designed to pool information and make it accessible to many people simultaneously.  The advent of email started a dramatic shift in the way individuals communicated, and it was suddenly possible to target information at multiple people at once without calling a meeting or delivering memos by hand.  Document management gradually became an issue as the numbe of documents and databases grew exponentially and seemed always to fill whatever storage space was available on the network.  Organizations were challenged with finding ways of assembling their data to reflect the internal configuration of departments and divisions." I used to use a simple saying when I was selling a network backplane or a star configuration to a customer.  "Never put anyone more than one drop away from the fiber."  If I could relate this adage to my proposed Intranet system I would now put it as follows:  "No more drilling than necessary."  We must find a way to limit the work involved in getting to the heart of any system.  Only by breaking it into smaller more manageable pieces can we hope to do this.  The designers of the SharePoint system may have been on to something with this approach.  I am just sorry it took so long for me to grasp it. Normally I would not venture out of the tech world but I have been reading some differing views on "Participatory Econonics Instead of Capitalism" and have found some interesting ideas as to what the effects of such a policy would be for us.  Since Capitalism itself incorporates private ownership of the means of production, market allocation, and corporate divisions of labor.  Remuneration is for property, power, and to a limited extent contribution to output.  Class divisions arise due to property and also due to differential access to empowered versus obedient work.  This does mean that huge differences in decision-making influence and quality of circumstances exist.  Buyers and sellers one-up each other.  The public reaps socail and ecological catastrophes that self-interested competition sows.  That is a paraphase from a particulary good essay for a book that was supposed to appear at the ESF this past October.  I can get a copy of the work if anyone is interested.  Till next post.   12:05:30 PM    comment []

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Sorry, have not been keeping up and I won't even apologize, I will tell you that I have very busy with a host of very interesting projects.  We will be insgtalling and configuring an IP digital video system next week so that we can keep track of some "dark" areas inside the Chartertech School.  Mostly I think that the cameras will at least make the students think twice about the staff's ability to keep tabs on them.  Another project at the Chartertech school will be the addition to the server compliment of a digital streaming server so that we can start distributing the school's performing arts productions out to the wild and make them available to those that can't be there in person.  We will use the streaming services provided by the Microsoft Server 2003 system and it should be a great project to be a part of.  Yet another project for the long term is the creation of a LON at GTPS.  The LON is a dirivitive of a LAN that we all know is a system of communications for personal computers and such for about 20 years or so.  The LON (local operating system) is a system by which we could tie up all the mechanical devices within the district's assorted equipment.  What the purpose of this would be to continuously monitor systems like the HVAC, electrical backbone, refrigeration systems, control systems of any sort, and maybe even the toaster in the admin dining room for that matter.  The use of a LON would enable us to be pro-active approach to facilities management.  It is a system like this that would allow us to control refrigeration, air conditioning, heating etc so that we could turn up and turn down as the systems were adjusted to maximise savings with regard to power consumption and thus reducing overall costs related to utilities.  The LON can operate on the same infrastructure that the LAN runs on at present.  The use of this technology can bring the district one step closer to the "greening" of the buildings.  Green buildings are now becoming avant garde in the sense that it is now cool to be green.  I have been looking at Green technology for the Chartertech school for the past year or so.  A one facility Green initiative, while noble, will not make that much of a difference.  I am pushing forward on it in hopes of being able to convince the board at GTPS that it will be a worthwhile objective there as well.  As I get more up to date on Green Technology I will write about it in the future and as it becomes more accessible for us to incorporate it into our working technologies on a day to day basis. I had a BOE tech meeting last night and I guess it went well enough.  There was an awful lot of information that had to be pushed through a short time frame.  Unfortuneately, not enough time to really get any idea on what we will be able to get done this year.  I hope we can push forward on our projects as we wanted to.  We may very well have to extend some projects over two years or so there were some interesting ideas on splitting up some projects so that they can be front loaded to get the more necessary pieces of the project pushed ahead.  The ideas came from the GTPS Instructional Technologist, Ms. Betty Garrity and while this concept may appear as a logical step it didn't occur to me or anyone else that has been working with the technology at GTPS.  Her insight towards getting this project underway and into production may have solved a problem before it reared up.  There are some recaps that will be necessary this month and as we finish up with this year I will attempt to get each of them articulated and fully documented.  Till next post.   9:28:47 PM    comment []

Monday, November 29, 2004

I can't help but think and wonder how I got anything done just five years ago.  Yes we had communication tools but I really don't think that broadband was really here as of yet and if it was I didn't have it yet, I can't remember anyway but the point I going to make tonight is that this is really the best of times for the work that we do.  I am not talking about end user software or XP or Linux or Netware or anything else of that sort.  What I am talking about is our ability to monitor and manipulate systems from anywhere at anytime.  Right this minute I am in three different systems.  "Washing" files in one, running backups in another, and running a system wide virus scan in another.  Alll three different systems being manipulated by me, remotely, and accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time.  Did someone say simultaneity?  Am I master of my domain, no I am master of four domains right now, the least bit being CIS.  I looked at event viewers tonight, read email, read virus alerts, move files from one spot to another to protect them from someone, backed up files to tape and to a storage array then took those files and sent the most important ones across the country to a holding bank so that someone else could look at them tommorrow and let me know if they found any problems.  Meanwhile all this time I am blogging just a bit as well.  How cool is all this.  No matter how I progressed in the business world or whatever becomes of my "educational career" I will always remain a geek at heart.  I have lost some of the sharpness I used to posess but for the most part, after I catch up on my quartely reading, I still understand most of the new and more complex ideas.  This is a great time to be a machine nut.  While software and operating systems will always lag behind, since software is hard and hardware is easy, the real fun in in making it all work.  I am getting a bit bored with my day to day of meetings and placation adventures.  I am growing tired of making sure that everyone gets thanked even when then haven't had a thing to do with anything that mattered.  I know it hits me every few years or so but I can't help it.  Maybe after the holidays are over I can get back into the swing of things.  Lets hope so.  Till next post. 8:04:08 PM    comment []

Monday, November 22, 2004

Once again I find myself remiss with the posting of this daily soujourn into the frightening realm of educational technology.  How's that for some fancy words?  In all honesty I have been traveling quite a bit more in the winter months than at any other time during the year.  I had been living primarily in one spot over the course of the last six months therefore the posting was an easy exercise to complete.  Not so much when you travel for an hour or so, eat, walk the dogs, and whatever else I seem to have to do each night and then if I have any energy left, I will write something.  So I do apologize and no, I am not sick or is there anything else wrong, mentally or physically I just have not had any free time. There is so much to catch up on I really don't know what to start with so I will move to the area that seems to be taking the most time to get finished and that would be the media centers at GTPS.  After some very careful consideration I have decided to not go with the Terminals in the centers.  First and foremost, some of the curriculum software does not run on the Terminal Server and just to get it to work would be very time comsuming and probably cost more than it would be worth.  Instead we are going with some refurbished Pentium III 1.0 Ghz Dell GX150's in both Roland and Smithville.  The rooms at Arthur Rann and Reeds Road are a mixture of Pentium III and IV's that we have either built or purchased over the last few years.  There are sixteen units at Rann, twenty-four at Reeds, and twenty each at Roland and Smithville.  Rann has a training center with twenty-four and both Roland and Smithville should be able to be upgraded to twenty four untis each after some additional electrical work in completed in the summer of 05.  We have the units in and Gary is working on an image for them.  I know he will complete the image quickly in addition to several other hundred tasks I seem to have handed him over the past month or so.   I guess I have been just loading the wagon and not worrying abou the horse with Gary for the better part of six straight months and hopefully he can catch somewhat of a break over the Christmas holidays with some not so busy days while everyone else is out on vacation or time off.    He had discovered some slight problems at Rann last week but came to a solution this afternoon so it would appear that Rann should be done by the end of this short week.  I have to meet with White Harris in the morning to discuss our switch to the TLS services this February.  They will need to transport the signal that is now captured and sent over the ATM network, to a LAN connection that will run through the Pleasantville Verizon CO.  With any luck we will be the first folks up on the TLS system and it will give our two "out of campus" larger elementary schools a 100 Mbps connection back to our network in the main building.  That will leave me with the four smaller elementary schools still on the WAN ATM connection which will just have to do.  The cost of the new system will be approximately $1,800 more per month but it has become a crucial matter since the lack of a high speed connection has caused us some very big problems within the operation of our student management and file storage systems this past few weeks.  I am cutting back on some other purchases to make up the difference and Verizon has assured me that the connection will be supported through our E-Rate funding "fingers are crossed when I say that", so as the communications grants come in I will put them to work in other areas.  After the phone meeting I have to get together with our copier rep from Canon, George Jacob and wrap up what should be approved at the BOE meeting in GTPS tonight.  The copier deal with Canon is nothing short of great for us and will serve to increase copies and substantially increase service throughout the district.  My compliments go out to George and the amount of work that he went through to help us out with this dilemma.  He could have left me sit in the old contracts and just wait them out but he went above and beyone to keep the deal alive until he could pull it off. After that meeting if there is anytime Gary and I have to go over the state of the state with regards to virus, backup, operations, tapes, tickets and anything else that we are doing on a day to day basis.  We have a very big BOE technology meeting on December 9th at 5:30 in the evening so that each of the board members that are involved in technology can attend for more than the obligitory forty-five minute briefing that is normally the case.  In the upcoming months there will be many decisions that will effect the technology program at GTPS either for the better or worse and they need to be fully briefed in order to make informed decisions on the issues.  It is sometimes important to remember that life is not run on a series of bullets and that you do need to develve into the detail sometimes in order to become informed. If I have anytime after that I will move the necessary tables and such to Smithville and will bring the crew over there on Weds. of this week to get at least three hours in after twelve so that we can get the monitors unboxed and the furniture put together once and for all.  We can meet during the work session and map out the rest of this month and the month of December.  I have some specifics that need to be addressed and I am sure that they will pose some very tight deadlines but we need to meet them all.  I need to have a good solid start to the beginning of the second half of the school year.  January, February, and March need to go much smoother that September, October, and November have.  I have no fear about April, May, and June since that is primarily the best time of the year for catch up and summer implementation planning.  That is it for tonight since I will try to catch up on Weds. of this week.  I have a few software items to discuss as well.  Till next post. 8:02:04 PM    comment []

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Well its been a week or so and I have not made that much progress in finishing up the last three remaining projects that have been hanging on since September.  Some good news is that we will be finished shortly on two of the three and it just is a matter of a few more days awaiting parts for both the Media Centers as well as the last touches on Art and GEM.  Tommorrow I hope to finish Arthur Rann's Media center and have it opened up to the students next week.  We had some additional wiriing changes as well as putting in two switches that we have had in storage for a few months   The parts I am waiting for are drives for the workstations and a mobile cart for both Roland and Smithville.  I need some electric run by our guys in both of those areas.  I am trying to get both of these areas done and I am still missing the carts to get it all put together.  The carts will be needed to keep the teacher's workstation on as well as provide the connectoin to the ceiling mounted projector. I had Tom put together the workstations for me and the first one I tested worked fine at Room 49 in Reeds Rd.  Fred and Tom worked in 49 last week and got both projectors working together as I had hoped that they would.  They installed the sound system as well and it seems to be working well too.  I am missing a few parts for that room as well.  Everything has been orderd for each project to be completed by the 19th of November.  I will be glad to turn over each area to the new respective owners.  The day to day is still going on and it has been a testament to how hard my people have been working over the past four months.  We are getting more done each day than most groups get done in a week  Nothing is out of reach and no problem goes unsolved.  Some of them take a bit longer than others but they all get done.  It does give me a good sense of confidence knowing that I can count on each of them to get the job done. I have finally got the deal setup for the addition of the copiers that I have been trying to get for the past few months.  I think it is a solid deal and will give the district the necessary copier compliment that we need to up the level of service and eliminate the excess copier costs that have been killing the budget for the past three months since we turned over the budget year.  George Jacob from Canon Business Solutions has constructed a nice package that will add an additional 10 copiers to the district as well as upgrade each of the existing copiers that are in use right now.  Our monthly copier count will jump to 450,000 a month so the excess charges will go away.  We are spending $299,000 per year including the excess copy costs.  With this new plan in place we will be able to provide an much higher level of service and save about $32,000 a year against the budget.  Every cost savings will help this year since we will be facing a shortfall that we already know about.  It should be great for the district and help out the staff qute a bit.  I am putting at least two new copiers in each of the four larger elementary schools as well as at least one in each of the smaller schools.  I will bring everything up to date this weekend so stay tuned.  Till next post. 10:38:18 PM    comment []

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Spent the morning working on the Smithville Media Center and then had to backtrack some orders that had been sent out in error.  Also, I finally got the process started on replacing the Kenavisoin document cameras that I had installed in the Middle School at GTPS.   They are being replaced with Avervision cameras that are of much better quality.  The teacher's workstations at the Middle School have been designed with the document camera as a primary tool in the entire enriched classroom environment.  My Troxel representative Dave Johnson, also came through with some very special pricing on the new units as well.  I had tried to save two hundred dollars per each camera and it got me no where with quality.  I should have known that it would not have been that easy.  I have several more untis that need to be built and I may switch myself on to that project for the day since I now have most of the parts needed to accomplish the task.  I also need to come up with the rest of the workstations that will drive the Media Centers.  I gave that task to Tom Ortiz and I am confident that he will get them done quickly.  I have had to rely on Fred Groff to handle the bulk of the work with regard to the important task of software installation that was requested by the Curriculum Department as well as preping the terminals for the Media Centers and in addition to all that, building workstations too.  Fred proves himself time and time again as the member of the group that can rise to the occasion every time I need him, whatever the task may be.  He is an extremely valuable member of my team and while I don't tell any of them that enough I appreciate their dedication to a man.  As I wrote earlier this week we should be able to wrap up most all of the loose ends by the end of next week.  Once that has been accomplished we can move on to some other projects that we need to get finished by the end of this calendar year.  I will review them next week in detail as it will help me get organized in my efforts. We have been discussing a slight change to the curriculum and majors at the Chartertech High School.  I proposed to the BOE there tonight that we add a "minor" to TV and Film with a concentration in Computer Technology.  I am some preliminary ideas as to what should be offerred and it could contain everything from infrastructure design and installation to animation drafting and programming.  It would be nice to put together a year to year set of courses that would enable a student to completely master the art of computing.  I will work on some ideas and post them to judge the response on them.  Till next post. 10:19:33 PM    comment []

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Finally, finally the light is actually appearing at the end of the tunnel with my summer/fall projects.  I am close on the Media Centers and I have set a drop dead date of next Thursday as the completion date for them.  We are also waiting for the rest of the Celeron processors that will enable us to get the final units built that will finish the last room that will be needed.  We will also be completing GEM, Art, and a couple of small projects that are still lingering on and on.  I am working on Smithville's Media Center over the next two days and I hope to be almost completed by end of day on Thursday.  I have several tables to construct, some addition wiring and some small amounts of electric that need to be done as well.  I have decided to put the teacher's station on a cart that will fit between two doors coming into the Media center.  Since the rooms were designed to accomodate twenty terminals and a laser printer as well as the teacher's workstation it will be tight for real estate.  We will be able to at some time add some units to the center island that I have left in the room.  What that will entail will be to break up the concrete to drop a conduit into the floor and run the necessary electric and network cables   In order to not ruin the view with a power pole I will need to get the electric to the unit in someway.  I don't know if we can do this inside but I will attempt to get our guys in Maintenance to get this done for me.  As we are finishing up the projects it is time to think about December and the rest of the year.  The month of December will be spent collecting our collective self and revisit the projects and coordinate with everyone as to the effectiveness of each.  I have some ideas as to what the rest of year will bring but we do have some commitments that we need to try to fulfill.  The teacher's workstations that we are working on are next on the list as well as the TV's that need to come out of the Middle School and be distributed to grades 1-3 in the elementary schools.  I have some units that need to be ghosted and installed in that function.  I may have to put that off since we have about two months of work in moving existing teacher's workstations throughout the district.  Since our electric has been taken care of we now can concentrate on putting everything where it belongs in the classrooms.  I have started this in Reeds Road this week and we should be pushing through this over the next two months.  We are now up to about 1100 workstations that have been hooked to the network and have received the latest virus protection updates that are needed.  Til next post. 10:48:58 PM    comment []

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Sorry for not posting for a few nights but I have been encountering some strange problems with the security system we have implemented at the Chartertech High School.  We keep having files deleted from some student folders.  This could happen a number of ways and I am slowly and I repeat slowly making progress in shutting those avenues down.  We give the teachers the right to look at the student folders since there is a need for them to peruse the files every now and then for control purposes.  This is going to change shortly.  I have been alerted to the fact that in the past certain teachers have given out their passwords to students for a variety of reasons.  Mostly to get things accomplished more quickly or if a teacher needed something done while they were out of the room for whatever reason.  I am going to take this feature away for the near future since it represents a gaping hole in the security of the system.  If a student has gotten ahold of a teacher's password we really have a problem.  If the teachers don't have rights to the student files then nothing can be deleted except from the teacher's folder itself.  I am also going to change the teacher's passwords this weekend as well.  If they give them out again I will recommend that they be written up for it.  I asked John to change the administrator's password and that has taken place.  I have been performing the backups every night as well as to minimize our exposure for deleted files.  We have also had to change some selected students passwords this week as well.  Yet there is one student that seems to keep getting files deleted and that indicates that a student has a teacher's password since no one has the new administrator's password.  What this represents is a subtle form of harrasment towards the student that has had their files deleted and trust me when we figure it out we will try to first remove the student from the school as well as possible prosecution of these kids.  This is troublesome at the least and has really caused us quite a bit of angst in the process. Spoke to Dell today about its new line of Fujitsu printers and while I am skeptical about buying anything but HP on the laser side I will give the new printers a chance this spring.  My hope is to effectively remove from service all of the HP Deskjet printers from the district over the next three years and that will require a substantial investment in the replacement printers.  The new Dell printers look as if they will cost $500 or so and they come network ready as standard.  I've said it before and I will say it again the proof is in how effective they are in the classrooms.  If we can improve service and cut the ever increasing expense of ink cartridges we will pursue this course.  Next weeks post will be project updates and more info on some of the new software systems that I have been looking at.  Till next post 11:01:47 PM    comment []

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Copiers, copiers, copiers.  How boring is this crap.  Really its not that bad.  I finally had my meeting with Geoge Jacobs from Canon Business Solutions who by the way is one of the best pre and post sales guys I have ever known.  He is also a heck of a nice guy to boot.  We spent the better part of the morning breaking down each lease and maintenance agreement for each of the Canon units I have in the district.  I will tell you again that my goal is to increase the copier compliment so I can offer better service throughout the district as well as eliminating as best I can the excess copier costs that seem to keep increasing year after year.  Take this situation and see if you agree with my thought process.  I have two copiers at the Middle School.  I have the Canon IR105 units in each teacher planning center on either side of the school on the first floor (that's important).  Every teacher in the school has to use either of these two copiers and the second floor teachers have to trek downstairs to get copies made.  In the past they have been sneaking in to the Vice Principal's office in each wing of the second floor, there are two of these wings, to make copys.  The problem is that they are old very low volume copiers that are now in disrepair and getting service for these is next to impossible.  In any event the sheer volume of copies is generating about $1,000 in excess copier costs per month for the building.  To lease two new Canon 2200 series copiers will actually give me an additional 10,000 copys a month and it will cost me less than the excess costs. So by adding the two copiers I will not only improve the level of service but be able to truly budget for the next fiscal with a much clearer idea on the building's copier costs.  There are seven other potential spots in the district that I could use these units in and depending on how the new leases can be worked out I may be able to get this done.  The older 550's and the Image Runner 5000 and 6000 may be able to be replaced and upgraded at a lessor amount.  I have said it before but the goal of this exercise is to expand the level of service and availability throughout the district while not spending any more money.  I hope to get close to this goal and I will keep you guys informed. I hope to keep this level of posting up for the foreseeable future and since the weather is changing and my outdoor activities are somewhat curtailed I should be able to accomplish this.  I have gotten some nice emails from folks over the past few weeks thanking me for keeping up with the nightly updates and I appreciate that very much.  Till next post. 10:37:44 PM    comment []

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

After a day off, once again not much went as planned.  I did however, get to spend a good portion of the day working on the copier compliment.  It should only take a few more sessions but I should be able to get a good handle on the leases, maintenance agreements, and the copy overage charges that we keep getting hit with.  I have the necessary information on the Xerox units and the Canon systems are next.  I have some time set aside for a short meeting with the Canon Business Solutions rep on Thursday.  I am now aware that there are two separate entities that we have been dealing with on the Canon copier systems.  Canon Financial Services handles both the leases and maintenance on about half of the units that we have in operation and Canon Business Solutions handles the rest.  My goal through this entire exercise is to add to the copier totals throughout the district, cut down on the excess copier costs and not spend a dime more than we are spending at present.  I have the need for small copiers in about six locations throughout the district.  I did get some preliminary information on some of the smaller units from Canon but those numbers did not fit into my budget constraints.  I need to get this accomplished and soon.  I was able to partially solve the location problems in three of the four smaller schools but there is one school that the unit is not accomplishing what they wanted.  I was informed this from other than the primary user of the new combination copier, scanner, printer and until I am notified from the primary I won't address it.  While the copiers are not actually high tech they do represent the most focal and vocal group of equipment in the district.  Just unplug one for any length of time and see what happens. I also made some progress with the Art project today and we were able to get the Reeds Road Art room up and running today with full Internet access as well as the Photoshop Elements program up and running.  I hope to have the Arthur Rann systems done tommorrow and Roland and Smithville on Friday.  I will have them delivered and setup by Tuesday of next week at the latest.  The projectors are up and running at Reeds Road and tommorrow if the inspections take place we will have Rann and the rest up within the next few days. Made some progress with Verizon on our Transparent Lan Services as well today.  As I have written in the past, the TLS will optimize the district's communications with regard to the computer system.  It also opens up the prospects of having our own GTPS district wide television station up with two years of the installation of the TLS systems.  I hope to institute 10Mb on the outer layers and 100 MB between Rann and Smithville all coming back to the tech center. The plan for tommorrow is to complete the work at the Roland Library and have it ready to be filmed on Friday.  Until, next post. 10:31:39 PM    comment []

Monday, October 04, 2004

As I had predicted nothing went as planned today in GTPS.  I had begun to arrange for the return of the faulty document cameras I was informed that the uproar over their introduction to the Middle School system was at best, unclear.  It really only takes one loud voice to cull most of the building into what seems to be a major unrest.  Not really.  Some like them, some don't.  Maybe they will stay after all or maybe they won't, I'll know by the end of this week.  That is all the time we have to make a decision on whether they keep them or not. Gary and I did head over to Colonge School this afternoon and finished putting up the rest of the workstations in that building.  We also discovered that the Head Teacher's office has been "stripped" of her work space inside her new digs.  She has been relegated to using a two person table as a desk and there is not much more room in the area for much else.  I have to come up with a plan to incorporate some kind of device so that she can work in that room.  I am toying with a laptop to solve the problem.  I have about $900 that I can spend on this and that is really it.  I will talk to the Business Office on Tuesday to see what can be done and quickly.  The reduction in space is due to an audit conducted by the County office on space allocation and it only serves to make my job a bit harder than it would be in it had not happened. Back on the copier problems as well today and I have not heard from George Jacobs from Canon Business Solutions yet about my proposal to renogotiate the leases for the existing large volume copiers in use throughout the district.  My goal is to increase the number of small copiers in strategic locations where personnel have to man the desk continuously.  Along with the lack of space issue, coverage is the next big thing with the smaller buildings.  The folks that man the main desk in each building are a gang of one when it comes to the building operations.  I have to put some better procedures into play if I can with the constraints of our budget situation.  We can not only save a few bucks in process but increase our level of service throughout the district with respect to the copier compliment. The rest of the week will hopefully play out as I had hoped but remember, I can't predict but I can prepare. I have some work to do on some plans for the ACTP and that should take a couple of hours to complete.  Contracts that will be binding throughout the county is my goal but I am going to invite Louis Barrios down to discuss the possibility of merging some of the functions with the South Jersey Technology Partnership with the ACTP and pooling the talents of both organizations.  We have a group of personnel that we would like to use and they have theirs but together the functions can be aligned so that we can get the most bang for the buck that we can.  The NJBOE show is on the 20th and our GTPS group is giving another presentation this year entitled "From the Inside Out" depicting the process by which we conduct technology projects.  From what I have seen and participated in so far this presentation will be the best so far.  Till next post.   8:05:55 PM    comment []

Sunday, October 03, 2004

This is the catch up phase of the fall technology project season.  I guess that's what I should call it for lack of a better term.  Most of the projects are very close to completion but not quite there yet.  I have the entire week planned out but I need to leave some extra time for the normal chaos that will definitely ensue.  Monday is returns day.  I need to arrange for the return of fifty document cameras from all over the district of which I don't have any packing material left.  It was all thrown out when the camera's were installed over the summer.  This could prove interesting since the packing material will probably cost us something extra.  We did receive the the "newest" camera from Avery this week and yes it is true, it does work better than the Kenavison units that Troxell had been supplying us.  I was disappointed with the quality of the previous units but I can't say enough about Dave Johnson and Troxell for sticking with the problem long enough to get a solution for us.  In addition to getting the units returned I need to get the Business Office to complete the necessary PO's that will enable me to get this done.  Hopefully we can get this done all on Monday, including the PO's that will allow me to get the cameras ordered. Tuesday will be GEM day.  I am going to try to hit each of the GEM rooms on Tuesday to recap with the teacher's what needs to happen for them to finish and just what is left for me to do in each of their rooms.  Rann is done and Reeds is close.  Smithville is without power as is Roland.  Tuesday will give me a punch list of what is left and also give me a time frame to share with them for completion.  I will have Tom Ortiz help me with Reeds on Tuesday so that I will at least have two rooms completed.  I will have him wire up the projector and the electric for it.  Two is half done. Wednsday will be Media day.  I do plan on sneaking in some work at Roland on Monday in addition to getting the camera's switched out.  I need to move some monitors and start to assemble the rest of the tables I purchased for the rooms.  Steve Wilkens from our maintenance department was able to cut up the center island for me last week and as usual he did a great job and gave me exactly what I asked for.  I believe that I should be able to get the room up and running in one day if I put the whole day into it.  It is probably about a three day project but if I hustle and work smart I may get it done much faster than that.  There will be some problems with one of the corner units that shipped with the furniture.  I will need to brace the unit with some sort of extra bracing that I will need to bolt onto the corner desk.  I will have Steve look at it this week and between the two of us we should get something together. Thursday will be coorespondence day.  I have paper work that is needed for Verizon, E-Rate,  2004 inventory documents and about a hundred return phone calls to make to a host of different people.  I am exchanging some printers as well as trying to work out the switch to the transparent lan services from Verizon.  This is the beginning of the movement away from the router based system that we are currently using on the off campus intranet connections.  I am also leaving two hours open to back track on the prior day's work as well.  I really don't expect to get the entire room done at Roland in one day but if I can get some help from Tom again with the wiring I may have a shot at it. Friday is a Staff-development day and that will take the entire day to complete.  It is a necessary day and there will be a number of very good presentations scheduled to take place.  That's the week in brief at Galloway. Charter represents some very different tasks to get this week in the books.  New systems in Music and TV will take up Monday and Tuesday night.  Tapes need to be done and rotated on Monday and Thursday of this week.  There will be some work in the academic wing with some software installs for both Math classrooms.  There are also going to be some storage space manipulations that will be necessary this week as well.  Most likely this will be a five night week at Charter since the system use if actually through the roof we are experiencing an extremely high volume of traffic on the system.  The staff are really using the system more and more each week since the beginning of this school year and we should have some interesting decisions to make before the end of this year.  I have to address the BOE about obsolence and the actual number of workstations that will be turned over this year.  Not a fun discussion but necessary.  Busy, busy week.  Till next post. 9:09:38 PM    comment []

Thursday, September 23, 2004

This Friday marks officially the start of the fall Technology season for those of us in the school technology business.  For anyone who knows the drill budget season is right around the corner.  In fact, vendors who have been doing this for some time will begin pitching new technology over the next three months in order to get the orders placed into the school budgets throughout the state.  Problem is, what are we going to look for?  I for one am looking at maintenance and products centered around the process of maintaining our equipment compliment.  We will be planning to really concentrate on making sure that the equipment we purchased in 2002-2003 will be in operation for the prescribed three year purchase plan.  Our obsolence program will be tested fully this year and next.  I plan on sticking to the program with getting three full years from the date of the purchase.  We need to get three full since at the price I paid per workstation, $275 per, will be fully justified since we would have kept a unit in operation for under $100 per year.  For 1400 units that cost is actually $140,000.   Tying that number to the replacement plan that is implemented each year is the trick.  Are the numbers really $100 per unti, well no there not.  You have to take the number of machines that we are currently utilizing then decide what number we need to retire.  Add back the numbers for new boxes, add that number to the cost of opeation of the existing machines, blend in the cost of the new machines that you will purchase or build and there you have it.  Do you really have it?  Not really, add numbers for printers, cartridges, cables, etc.   Will that give you a true cost of the TCO?  Not really.  What is the TCO?  I really don't know, I am still working on it.  I have been through multiple equations, formulas, books, papers and the like.  No luck, not any.  I need to combine all of the above and probably some facets that I have not contemplated yet.  How is this possible?  Why don't I know the straight answer, the reason my friend is that there is none.  Variables, variables, variables and more variables.  Here is my short concerted plan.  I am going to plan on replacing the GX1's throughout the district that are Pentium II, 350 Mhz and below.  I have a number to work with but I will refine it more as the year goes on.  What I do know is that the replacement cost is going to be $275 each.  I probably need about 200 units which will have a cost of $55,000 or so.  There will be some bargaining over price and I may get the unit price down to a low as $235 each.  Those 200 units will be dispersed to the district where we deem we will get the most bang for the buck.  The Middle School will get some and the workstations replaced at the MS will then be shipped to either the Kindergarten Centers or Colonge school for 1st through 3rd grade usage.  The GX1's will fit in for the two more years that we need them to operate at that level.  I will rotate 150 of the new units through the MS next summer and then 150 the next.  Followed by the the remainder of the workstations the third year.  So much for the replacement plan.  I will elaborate more fully next post.  Till then. 9:57:49 PM    comment []

Friday, September 17, 2004

Things are progressing albeit much more slowly than I had originally intended.  I have been able to put some of the current problems that we have been experiencing over the past two weeks.  I spent some time today at Arthur Rann and made sure that those that needed help at the beginning of the week were doing ok.  Seems that everyone is up and running even the those connections that I thought had been damaged during the electrical wiring.  It would appear that I had not remembered where the original wiring terminated for two of the drops that were causing us the most concern.  At one time we must have not been able to add any additional wiring to the center of the building before it became the MDF for the building.  The runs for both Guidance and the Nurse's office had been terminated at the Library IDF which we had about seven years ago reserved for the Library lookup stations and the two machines used by the Media Center personnel.  Now that we have found the connections we have been able to solve the room by room connection problem we were experiencing.  I had to spend some time in the Tech Center located at Rann today as well.  From the moves and such this summer the room had become a bit of a dumping ground for machines awaiting a rebuild and re-assignment.  There is also the rest of the summer gear that will need to be distributed to their eventual home.  I have run into a bit of a problem with the utilization of the scan converters for GEM and the Media Centers.  I have also decided to use the ATI 9000 cards in the teacher's workstation for as a replacement for the scan converters.  I will only need a VGA amplifier for the eight stations that I am rebuilding for those rooms.  I have been experimenting with the ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro cards but have run into a snag of sorts.  The new 9800 cards require a power connection to properly drive them.  The power connection itself needs to come from at least a 300Watt power supply.  The Dell boxes that I have slated for use as the teacher workstations in both places are only 250 Watts.  The small form factor Minuets that we have built are also under the 300 threshold so that leaves me with few choices.  I am going to test a 9000 Pro to ensure that it will work without the power connection which is necessary for the newer cards.  Getting the older model card will not be a problem.  They are still very plentiful on the open market.  I will have them within a week or so.  They will provide the necessary connections for both the projectors and the document cameras.  Also those cards will allow me to hook up many other devices the one I am focusing on right now is the VCR/DVD combination player.   I guess some ideas do stand the test of time.  This is the original design of the technology enriched classrooms and that have stayed strong for a full year.  The only piece of the puzzle that has fallen short in those classrooms is the VCR.  In an attempt to save money off the original estimate I went with the much cheaper VCR.  Since I had put the DVD player in the machine I thought I could shortchange it and get away with it.  No such luck.  The teacher's have made the best of it and have not complained too much but I know different.  They will have to live with these units at least until the end of the year, there are no extra funds available to replace them.  The units have no trade value either.  They will, however, work nicely in our 1st through 3rd grade units that will get the Middle School TVs this year. I had wanted to get as much done on the projects that are awaiting electricity and also we have been building our inventory day by day with the my conducting an on-site at each school.  I will start back on that at Arthur Rann on Monday.  I can only put in about two hours in each building but so far that has proven sufficient enough to get the inventory done.  No surprises so far except possible the multitude of deskjet printers that we are still using.  I have found numbers as low as 550 in our current inventory.  I am not sure that they actually make cartridges for that model any more.  So far we are not too far behind on the workload being one man down for the better part of two weeks but it does make it tough to get everything done.  I would hope that we can bring Fred back slowly and we can start at the Tech Center reflashing the terminals for use in the Media Centers.  I had hoped also to finish the labs at Roland and Smithville this week and that is within reach that is if I can fit it into the week with all the administrative work that will consume my time.  Thats it for now, I have a couple of machines to build since I finally have all the parts necessary for the home video units that I had been working on a few months ago.  Till next post. 7:06:02 PM    comment []

Sunday, September 12, 2004

I have been working the better part of the day putting together the outline for the documentation project we are undertaking at GTPS.  I will start with the easiest of items first and that will be the hardware installed in the current compliment throughout the district.  I am starting at Reeds Road and once that building is completed I will move on to Arthur Rann.  This will accomplish some additional tasks that need doing at present.  First, I need to develop a cable relocation strategy.  I have a good idea in my head as to how I am going to put this together but it needs to unfold from my head to paper.  The admin help I am getting will assist the process but I still have to do it.  In addition, I will be able to judge much better after visiting every classroom, admin, and specialty room in the district the extent of what our current situation looks like with regard to our obsolensce plan requirements off the district's tech plan.  Last but not least I will be taking some photographs of classrooms throughout the district, a sort of before and after look at the movement necessitated by our electrical upgrade project.  The first two weeks will be spent collecting the evidence (data) to compile the results and start to put the data in readable fashion.  The point of this exercise is to have in writing and layout form a blueprint of the GTPS Digital Network.  The second part of the plan will be to put together the diagrams of the "inside" network.  That would be the infrastructure mapping.  From every MDF to IDF within the district, from every primary and secondary connection and everything in between.  A complete layout of the system.  I think I know where most everything is connected but even I have lost count of the actual physical connections throughout the enterprise.  I am hoping that with this collection process we will be able to diagnose connectivity problems on a much faster basis.  Once the inside is completed we will then move toward the WAN and its components.  We will document the current and what the plans are for the next three years.  As I have written in the past, we are in the process of moving both Smithville and Rann toward a new connection system from Verizon known as Transparent LAN Services or TLS.  This system will give us a clean 10Mbps connection which will more that quadruple the current bandwidth requirements.  It will also give us the ability to utilize a wayside T-1 to continue to provide phone service on the WAN instead of through a Verizon Central Office account. The third part of the plan is to document the projects completed over the last two years and complete a maintenance plan to review and either upgrade or replace the existing project as the needs are better known.  I need to do the review on each of the projects to determine whether they met the anticipated goal or they have failed to complete the intended results.  I will give you an example, the mobile projection units were at first a very good idea.  What I didn't count on is their extreme use in the first year.  As I have been getting to each school I am finding that about twenty percent of the carts are not operational.  This is due to a variety of reasons.  In some cases the wheels have simply broken off and need to be repaired.  Actually the wheels need to be replaced with better rubber wheels that I will get to sometime this fall.  Each of the carts needs to be reviewed and looked at.  No time this month or next and with the electrical project taking precedent I will get to it as soon as possible.  That is just one of thirty projects that were completed over the last two years that needs to be reviewed and possible changes made.  The idea will be to go back and either do away with or fix the fallout from each one.  Change is tough but in order for the staff to accept change they need to have the equipment working as it was intended to.  The last part will be the presentation to the BOE Tech Committee with regard to the present state of the state and what the future will hold as far as equipment purchases due to retirement of old gear and what other avenues we may explore in order to keep the technology movement alive at GTPS.  Till next post. 8:51:32 PM    comment []

Saturday, September 11, 2004

I have multiple tasks to both complete and launch this week.  First off, I am getting some much needed administrative support in the form of a retiring administrative assistant for approximately a month's time.  I have been wanting to simply document everything that has gone on over the past two years so that I can debrief the history and create both a story and a time line for the projects that have taken place in the past twenty-six months.  In the process of putting this together I will also be able to create a systems chart that will create an end product from which future decisions on either infrastructure as it relates to technology and or infrastructure as it relates to operations and facilities.  Over these past twenty-six months we have developed a substantial Technical Services influx and in the process have significantly changed the hows and means of instructional delivery throughout the district.  It is important that I bring the plan to light slowly and only as is needed.  I have written in the past about the significant nature of change and the responsibility of bringing forth change in a positive light.  Navigating through the ego's, the preconceptions, and the flat out resistance to any idea that does not come directly from either a committee or "outside" educational facility has proven somewhat more difficult and time consuming that I had originally thought.  I am making progress, at Galloway we are now at approximatly 100 "technology enriched" classrooms throughout the district.  I have 100 more to go over the next two years and I am hoping that we can fund it through our next round of Erate filings.  I will probably have to fight through some resistance to accomplish this.  More quoting the "rules" that may or may not exist BOE comments that may or may not exist, who knows?  I will keep up the pressure until we have at least every classroom 4th through 8th outfitted with the tools necessary to truly enhance instruction.  I was estactic at the BOE support for the Middle School project this summer and as the year unfolds and statistics all around start to rise that will be the direct result of a board that truly does what the best for the students.  Back to the documentation project.  I will debrief on everything, between myself and Gary K I guess we are the only two that know where all the bodies are buried.  Here is our chance to get it in the proper format for whomever may come next.  From copiers to fax machines to CAT 5 connections we are going to create the complete information manual for our side of the district.  Not only is this necessary but it is essential.  I have been moving at to fast a pace but I had a schedule to keep.  I have not shared that scheduled with anyone but it was aggressive to say the least.  I needed to fit six years of work into three now it looks as though I will have to fit eight years into five.  This is not so much a problem more than a committement on my part.  I need a time to let my guys recover and catch up with the plan so far they have responded but at the end of a very busy summer they are much to tired to start out the year of support.  I have forced them to raise their skill sets far too quickly and it has taken its toal on each of them.  While I know that they are better for it I do need to allow a time frame for maintenance of existing systems as well as the completion of this years projects and I am prepared to do that.  It will get a bit worse over the next two months as we finish the electrical upgrades in the four large elementary schools and we have a health problem with one of our own that will slow us down even more for some time as well.  During this administrative time I will also be going room to room to establish a "reconnect" game plan that will take shape over the next week or so.  In all it will probably cost me an addition twenty hours a week to complete both this project and continue to work on the day to day aspects of the system's maintenance requirements.  Remember the plan is to create the absolute answer to how a K-12 district compliment can perform.  Nothing short of that will suffice. Work at Charter has progressed significantly this week with the completion of the entire academic wing's workstations.  All 300 workstations are up and operational as of Saturday.  Minor adjustments in the icons located in the redirect system will need to take place but aside from that we are off to a good start.  Next week I will be concentrating on the performing arts section and its compliment of systems.  I am starting in Animation and TV on Monday night and I will begin with the new TV production room which will be outfitted with a new production system which will give the TV folks a new start toward the transformation from linear to digital editing.  We have changed administrations at Chartertech this year as well as new personnel in TV.  We are emphasising the switch from the new to the "newest" technology for digital editing and broadcasting.  Now is the time to accomplish this as we bring a whole new class on line.  I am looking at the switch from Avid to a new more microcomputer based system for use throughout TV.  One system that has my interest is the Vegas 5 system from Sony.  Their product line also has been ramped up for sound process as well as still and animation.  I have ordered a set of the entire suite so that we can take a good look at the products and see what is a curriculum fit and what is not.  There is also some new work and classes being proposed by the Atlantic Arts Academy as well.  I had hoped to help them start some digital photography classes this fall but we may have to wait until the spring.   I have discussed the introduction of several classes relating to the general use of computers for the layman.  I felt that if we started a ground zero and worked our way up through virus protection, personal firewalls, service packs, in essence, the works.  It will take some time to structure a class around this premise but it would be a worthwhile effort and it will promote the Academy on its own right.  Enough, I need to get some more thoughts down for the start of the week.  Till next post. 9:14:48 PM    comment []

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Well here we are again.  The start of yet another school year.  Mostly, yes, mostly, I am prepared to start the year in both locations.  One much more than the other but still this is the best its been in quite awhile.  I have had the luxury of having some dedicated help again this summer,  The three "workers" Tom Ortiz, Fred Groff, and Sue Hiltner put is some hard days this summer, especially Tom Ortiz.  A living and breathing example of what a great employee is made of.  We gave him a chance and he has responded ten-fold.  Fred was steady all summer even in the midst of constant change and Sue Hiltner, who joined us for a second summer on hiatus from the Food Service Group was also very responsible in her duties as well.  Now that we are into the start of the year we will be addressing mostly the startup concerns of the administration as well as the teaching staff.  I have specific problems related to the electrical upgrades that are taking place in Galloway.  The contractor had gotten a late start on the project through no fault of his just the usual permit application problems.  They have worked very hard to get "substantially" complete in two of the elementary schools.  Unfortunately for me, I can't get going on the completion of several projects at Galloway.  I had hoped to be completed with our GEM, Music, and Art projects for the start of the new year.  I have had the help of our District's Elementary Music staff with getting this project underway and the person I most need to thank is Ben Fong of the Reeds Road staff.    We are now ready to distribute the systems into the four larger elementary schools and that will take place towards the end of the week.  We will be down a man in Galloway for upwards of a few weeks and this will set us back even furthur into the end of the month.  I started to put pen to paper today to come up with a punch list of sorts that will allow me some timelines as to when I can finish up some of the projects.  For the most part I will accept an October 1st, deadline as the only realistic one that I can expect.   I have about a month's work of work at the tech center in Galloway.  I need to prep terminals as well as upt together the start of the Teacher workstations for the remainder of the district.  This will be mostly bench work and I was hoping to get that started on Tuesday.  I also will be working on the Media Center layouts this Thursday and Friday at both Roland and Smithville.   That will mostly be a distribution of sorts that will commence on Thursday.  The maintenance tickets will also be coming in this week and we will start addressing them at the start of the week.  Charter had a very smooth start with the only real problems centering around the use of the new student management system.  Marc Zydiak is handling the day to day similarly to the way the the former Principal had handled it in the past.  He is competent with the system and he is comfortable in teaching the rest of the staff in its use.  We are adding some blogging to the curriculum this year and that will start in the second semester after Christmas break, yeah thats right, Christmas break.  I will hope to introduce it then to the Freshman English classes and keep you informed.  Till next time.  6:48:05 PM    comment []

Monday, August 16, 2004

Once again I must apologize for the lack of posting over these last two weeks.  Its not that there is nothing to write about it is just that I have not been able to truly articulate what has been going on at both schools.  I can tell you this, today was actually the first day that I have gotten to work on anything related directly to technology.  Most of this summer has been spent on "other issues".  Purchasing mostly and a great deal of facilities, building management, and personnel issues have really monopolized my summer.  I did get to "ghost" some images today and that was the most fun I've had all summer.  Back to the topic at hand, the reason I have been allowed to concentrate on non-technology issues has been my ability to rely on my systems people at both locations.  Gary K. has had an extremely productive summer.  We have been on a constant upgrade path for the path ten months nonstop.  I mean nonstop.  I have asked him to do the next to impossible and he has delivered in every area as well as helping to supervise and step in on a multitude of projects that have been going on this summer.  I could not have asked for more from him but somehow I feel even if I had he would have delivered whatever I requested.  On the Charter side of things John Spencer has always been steady and it's his continual monitoring that has allowed us to smoothly add processes throughout the building.  John has designed most of the framework that runs the systems in the building and they are standing the test of time.  Aside from some minor adjustments we will continue to utilize the structure that is now in place.  We are changing student management systems this year and John's expertise will once again be put to the test in getting things done.  As with Gary K. my reliance on Spence has enabled me to concentrate on other technology issues throughout the school that would have otherwise fallen by the wayside.  I also have to give credit to my son Jonathan, he has tackled the day to day more mundane tasks of getting new machines built, rebuilding older equipment, and performing the necessary preventitive maintenance that will extend the life of the existing equipment.  I would imagine he has garnered approximately a full year's experience in just three short months.  The experience in putting the systems together is priceless and if he chooses to continue with this line of work he has a leg up on anyone without the hands on experience. The rest of the week we will be concentrating on finishing the Middle School at Galloway and putting the finishing touches on the Charter School systems as well.  I will be building and distributing furniture the rest of this week at Galloway and next week we will finish all the smaller projects in Galloway and get a handle on most of the loose ends.  That will bring us up to September 2nd and we should be able to reach a satisfactory completion ratio of  attempts to project done.  I will breakdown each of the projects that are close to finishing next post.  Till then. 7:57:40 PM    comment []

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Most of the projects that we have started in July are progressing, albeit somewhat more slowly than I had hoped for.  Progress has been slow due to various reasons and mostly it has been with the vendor side of the purchasing process.  I had envisoned a dismal time of getting the work out the door from our offices but in fact, that has not been a problem.  A couple of dropped POs means nothing when you are pushing millions of dollars in POs out the door and really with just one person handling the job.  No, the problem is with the companies selling things to the educational audience.  I have been trying to buy a music program Sibielus for the past month.  Ben Fong, my music contact tells me that this is a popular program.  I can't seem to get them on the phone.  I have tried three different contacts.  I let Ben know the problems and he is now pitching in to give me a hand but so far no luck.  I did find a company called the CD-ROM store that will sell it to us along with another program called Music Ace or Smart Music or something like that.  I doubt I'll see them soon.  Every order from TekConnect has been wrong or simply just not what I had originally purchased.  I can honestly say that the only vendor and this includes all the vendors that I have done business with this year from Verizon to Dell and back, HP Direct has been the best of the lot.  So much so that I am going to switch to going direct for all our printer and tablet needs.  The fact that really bugs me is that if you do business with education then you should know your sales cycle.  Not many do, as witnessed by the number of sales people out on vacation during the peak time of either the sales cycle or the delivery and install process.   I never really had a vacation of any kind when I was out on my own, I was on the phone all the time continuously tieing up loose ends.  I made my guys wait until September or October to take their time off.  So much for the old times.  I can't get a hold of anyone.  And whats up with all this training for sales people?  It seems that everyone at TekConnect is either on vacation or out at training for some new product.  Meanwhile the orders are not getting filled and customer service is not really a priority.  I am so glad I didn't go. I have decided to take a bit of a chance and go with some small color lasers in the Media Centers, GEM, and Art, especially Art.  I will need about fifteen of these units and I think the HP 2550Ln will do well for us.  It is an HP color laser so it will be able to produce about 30,000 copies a month.  This should be more than enough of a duty cycle for our needs.  I am concerned about the toner but I want them in use so I will just have to monitor them more closely than in the past.  The cost on the units is approximately $695 per and that includes the network print server that is needed to directly attach them to the network.  I will need to remember to put in an extra drop in each of the areas or add a network switch to the mix as I will need to connect them to the system to get them working.  I think it is a safe bet that I am putting them in good hands all around so the users that are going to be responsible for their use will help out as well. Speaking of the Media Centers a few changes are being forced on me due to some fiscal restraints as well as proximity to electric and just ceilings that are too high for anyone to reach screen handles. I will need to put in a mechinized unit in the Reeds Rd. Media Center for their use.  I am going to give Dave Johnson from Troxell Communications a call and ask his opinion on what I can do.  He has not steered me to far off course in the past so I should be able to go with his recommendations.  Money will be a problem but I think I may be able to save the funds I had budgeted for carts for the TVs that are heading to grades one to three.  I think we can use the material that is left from the counter top replacement project at Reeds Rd. to build a small "cabinet with three sides and a top out of the material we have left and some 2x3's.  I spoke to Steve Wilkens, our resident carpenter and he thinks he can come up with a solid design that will allow us to place the TVs on these boxes as well as make a shelf for a VCR and some storage as well.  The cost of the wood and screws to make them up is far, far less than I would have spent for carts out of a catalog.  I would estimate the cost of each box at about $30 as opposed to $250 or so for something that was "pretty". With that last statement in mind, I guess the watchwords for the summer projects has been functional and cost effective with an eye on the price of everything.  Till next time. 9:26:09 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

I have been measuring and re-measuring the layouts of the new labs in the Media Centers and have basically been able to put together a standard look for the twin schools and have come up with a hybrid for one of the smaller media centers and have settled on a design for the larger setup for the last elementary school center.  The final look and feel for all of the new centers is going to be basically computer furniture that comes with the connection kits enabling it to be bolted together and made to act as one piece.  There are some very precise measurements that I had to adhere to when laying out the furniture spacing of each of the centers.  I am a couple of partitions short in my attempt to utilize all the space that I can for the labs at Smithville and Roland Rogers.  I had the option of going with 4,5,or 6 foot tables which would have gave me enough flexibility to make the lengths what I needed.  I was also able to negotiate a better deal for both the tables and the chairs.  The final cost of the entire total coming in at $11,400.  I am getting a ton of furniture for that price and if I had paid the state contract price on any of it the cost would have been well over $20,000 so I really can't complain.  The company that is supplying the equipment is throwing in the powder coating of the table and chair legs for no additional cost and that was a nice touch by them even after I had worked them pretty good with regard to price and shipping.  Shipping is something you can't avoid but if you choose to help the driver with the skids off the truck you can save big, very big.  The local carrier will give you the use of a lift gate truck that will make the process a bit smoother and that will also not cost you much more than you would pay with regular delivery by common carrier.  The counter tops are grey nebula and the chairs are burgundy (cabernet).  The look should be nice except for the ones that are headed to Arthur Rann.  Those will contrast very much with the new blue carpet that they put in this week over there.  There is a chance that I may be able to change both the tops and the chair colors for those headed to Rann but if it costs one dollar more I can't do it.  The budget is extremely slight on this project and it is going to be very close to max after this furniture order.  I did get plenty of help from the Board and the Technology Committee when it came time to buy ahead for this years projects.  They were very generous with letting me go ahead with all of these projects and they helped us out with additional funding for the projects.  Spent time today working with trying to re-aquaint myself with data and utilizing a matrix format to manipulate the data out of some older systems and put back into a couple of newer systems.  I was pulling the data out of a data base that was non-SQL and trying to re-insert and re-index data into a newer 4GL language that I am attempting to use for an inventory system.  I was trying to tie the purchasing and inventory system to a new fixed assets program.  I have made some progress but I am not making the sort of dent into the data conversions that I thought I could.  I have too many other projects going on right now including helping with the new counter tops we are installing into Reeds Road this next week or so.  I have 100 sheets of finished plywood to cut and install into the school this week.  The idea behind this is sound but the implemtation will be a pain.  I have the district's resident carpenter on the site and he will begin measuring and cutting by Thursday and when we receive the rest of the hardware for the project we will start putting them in the classrooms. Our electrical project is still waiting for wire or at least that is what they are telling me.  They have scheduled a job meeting for Thursday morning and forgot to include me in that discussion.  I have a chance to see the new Tablets from HP and see the inner workings of a state intermediate unit as well as get a first hand look at the new TLS services from Verizon.  As I have written before the availability of the new network connections are exciting to say the least.  It is actually a good thing that I had procrastinated long enough about a district fiber setup and had dropped the idea of the microwave towers when it became to expensive a proposition.  How would you like to just have spent about $200,000 or more on a dedicated fiber source and then in the blink of an eye you can have the services available to you for a couple of hundred dollars more a month.  I am certainly glad that I didn't recommend any of this to anyone. John Spencer finished the new Blog server for Chartertech and we installed in tonight.  I realize that this is a test of "inside" blogging and hopefully we will be able to make use of it in all three of the freshman English classes.  I will be interested to see if any of them really take to the creative side of the process.  I am also going to re-open Jim Glenn's Interactive Amedeus blog that will outline his historic trip to Vienna this past month.  I got a chance to talk to him this week and he was still about 10 feet off the ground.  He's a great guy and I can't believe that the kids won't benefit from his trip.  Till next post.   9:54:32 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 22, 2004

I have been working on the new Media Center Projects throughout GTPS for the past few months.  The concept, planning, selling parts were easy enough.  The additions to the Media Centers are a project whose time has come and was probably two or three years late in fact.  We had talked many times about putting together these rooms and it had almost happened once before during my tenure at GTPS.  In short, they are comming.  A couple of problems, I have a furniture budget of about $10,000 I am not sure the last time I had priced out computer or lab furniture and I am not sure what I was thinking when I set that number but I do know that I am up to figures at about $14,500 or so.  I mentioned in the last post that I was optimistic about the possibility of getting down to my original number for the furniture portion but after today I may be stumped with the total comming in at about $12,000 or so.  I realize that it is my own fault for shooting so low but the numbers crunch is comming from the chairs.  I am not sure if I thought that I could get the chairs at $20 a piece or what but I must have been either very tired on just not paying attention when I put together the estimate.  The best I have come up with so far is about $36 per chair.  Not bad but when you need a hundred or so chairs the difference means about a little over a thousand dollars.  Another item I have been wavering on has been whether or not I can reuse some of the library furniture at both Roland and Smithville.  To their credit, the Media Center personnel have kept this stuff in very good shape.  I had our resident carpenter Steve Wilkens from the Maintenance Department look at the custom casework that currently serving as the computer center in both locations.  I want to take them apart, remove the center backdrops and then re-assemble them for use as the center island of my design in both of those locations.  His first thoughts were that it could be done but since I have them working on a number of projects that have to be completed soon the question is when?  August is shaping up to be a real tough month.  I really only have three weeks to pump a couple of months work into the finishing of each of the tech projects that are in progress.  Fred has most of the machines built and we have about 10 or so left to do but they have not arrived at the tech center as yet and I am sure that he will knock them out as quickly as he did the first 75 units.  The real reason for this story is table height and the determination of the proper table height for the lab and media center tables.  I have been measuring around the district and have come up with multiple locations with counter heights from 24 inches to 32 inches.  I have looked at over fifty catalogs that have either fixed height tables or adjustable height tables.  The fixed height tables are the ones that are in our price range and I have come across sets that have 30 inches of desktop space as well as are 28.5 inches in height.  I am going to review the selections Friday and make my choices on Monday morning.  Once the tables are ordered and the carpet put in in the Rann and Reeds I can begin to build the centers.  I am hoping that I can put it into high gear in August and I can get the areas ready for the beginning of school.  We will have to assemble the furniture but that is what we have done in the past so I am sure that we can get that done.  We have to paint in one room and Butch has gotten the lights done in Room 49 at Reeds Rd. and they look great.  Taking down the lights from the exterior of the grid has really opened up the room and should give us quite a bit more light that was in the room before.  In any event I hope my selection of the tables is good for everyone concerned.  I have adults and students to provide for so the task is not simple and I would imagine that I won't make everyone happy with my selections but its the best I could find. 7:53:06 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Finally there has been some progress with regard to solving both the bandwidth and connectivity issues that have been impeding the full development of classroom use of the Internet and all of its assciated benefits.  Yes, yes, before you go off and say something like "hey we are getting benefit from the current system"  yes you are but there is so much more possible.  On-line access to the world at heretofore unheard of speeds or at least that is what the potential is.  Internet access at local LAN speeds is what I am really trying to describe.  For instance, say your ISP is receiving their Internet connection from a 45Mbps connection directly off the Commodity Internet and quite possibly a 155 Mbps connection off of an ATM connection.  Our current connection is rated at 25 Mbps but due to ATM bandwidth considerations and a limitation of that bandwidth we are really receiving Intenet traffic at about 8 to 9 Mbps.  What might it be like to get a full 45 Mbps or, brace yourself, 155 Mbps directly off one of the national backbones.  What would be possible with this, in short, everything.  What sort of access might that provide?  I guess a better statement would be what sort would it not.  ON-DEMAND everything, regardless of size, regardless of the type of transmission at those speeds who cares how big or how many times you want to use whatever it is.  This of the pressure this could alleviate in education.  At those speeds the educational facilities could be easily clustered into one central environment so that what was available to one could be made available to all participants in the network.  Either one big domain, instead of GTPS everyone in our county could belong to ACTP.  Filtering, virus protection, backup, monitoring, software installation, software support, video streaming, distance learning, firewall protection, spam blocking, email systems like Exchange or any of the open source systems could be made available to anyone instantly that participated on the network.  Lesson plans, training videos of every kind, how to do just about everything could be made available.  I realize I am missing some things since I don't always think of the classroom situations at the detail level I need to but I know I could make it better for the teachers in general if we could construct a system like this.  Could we?  Well there is a move afoot from Verizon that they have been working on for some time and have now decided to open it to the world, albeit in small doses at first.  They are calling it TLS which stands for Transparent LAN Services and basically it consists of the construction of point to point LANs running on existing fiber that Verizon has been installing over the past twenty years or so.  Up till this point it really has not made business sense to put it on the street for the general usage of us commoners.  I do understand that this type of service has been available for some time in the corporate sector.   They first introduced me to their plan over a year ago and swore me to secrecy.  It is the reason that I dropped the microwave towers off the proposed jobs for tech services.  In essence they will let us use their Central Office as a VLAN switching system so that all of our outlying connections will be able to connect up to the central MDF for the district.  The outlying schools would simply be straight Ethernet connections back to the main system.  This type of connectivity can be stretched out not just to our district but to every district in the county.  Each of us could become a node on one big Ethernet network.  Novell, Microsoft, Linux or any other operating system you are using could talk directly to this system.  Thats where the fun could start.  Think of the possibilities of the money that could be saved by the use of this technology in the county.  I have not had the time to really brainstorm this and I have only spoken to a few folks about this but as I think about it more and more it looks very good from the services side of the house. Things are moving ahead with the work at both schools.  Images are being constructed at Charter for the five different types of machines that they are using this year.  There was only enough money to replace fifty of the original units and next year we will be replacing at least one hundred of the units that are in service right now.  Funds are tight and while I have gotten pretty good at getting the most for the dollar there is a limit as to just how low I can get the prices.  You can't expect the vendors to just give it to you for no profit.  For the most part though, as I have written in the past, times are a bit tough for the educational vendor community in general with the funding crush being placed on everyone.  Next year will be more difficult than this one and I am trying ot prepare the board at Charter for the worst and maybe I won't have to pull a rabbit out of my hat again next year. Galloway is also moving ahead with each of the projects.  I spent the better part of the day looking for less expensive furniture for the media centers and the one true lab room that we are converting this summer.  I have about $10,000 to spend on computer tables and chairs and wiring for all four facilities.  This is becoming a challenge for me and I am going to prevail.  I have the total down to about $14,000 right now and I will make the budget that I have sworn to.  OK, have to go now since I promised the Gabster a little walk around the block tonight after she had a chance to recover from the dinner I made tonight.  See ya next post. 7:52:34 PM    comment []

Friday, July 16, 2004

I have spoken before about the new rage of "little PCs" that are beginning to enter the market in a bigger more sophisticated way.  There is one set of computers that I am looking at for several projects that will require the utmost conservation of space.  These units are pretty cool in the fact that you can get P4, P3, Fanless and an expansion slot configuration.  I have looked into several models that they have and one that really has intrigued me is the LPC-301 model.  This model contains a P3 with onboard LAN, USB, Firewire, Audio, Serial, Video.  The niftiest little feature is the solid state hard drive which is optional.  Here is a taste of what they are about.  The Flash Disk Drives are solid-state devices that replicate a standard IDE or SCSI Disk Drive.  Since they have no moving parts they can withstand extreme shock, vibration, temperature and harsh environmental conditions while not compromising on data integrity.  That is right out of the marketing material and there is more good stuff on their site.  One particular application that I am looking at for these is the new "book rooms" at Galloway.  Space will really be at a premium and if somehow I can get these units into play I will be able to save quite a bit of workspace that will be needed for what else, books.  Check them out they are really neat.  I was talking with Gary K. this week and I mentioned to him that there used to be a PC that was sold a few years ago that was deemed an "industrial strength PC/notebook".  Neither one of us could remember what it was called but it finally came to me.  It was a Grid Computer and it was very distinctive in that it had an amber display.  In fact, before green became the color of choice for monochrome monitors amber was very popular.  I sold a great deal of those amber Amdek monitors in the beginning years of our business.  Anyway this Little PCs remind me of those Grid units. Started reviewing and reading a months worth of blog info and I came across some more nice support work from Microsoft.  It is a blog front end of some sort and one of the tracks it lead me down was the Windows Exchange Community Center.  There is a ton of information to be gleaned from this site.  There is a newsgroup section as well as a way to meet and leave words with some of the Microsoft MVPs.  That in itself is very nice.  They have also started a Community Kitchen at MSDN and that will provide Microsoft.com web sites with dynamic, scooped content feeds that are RSS-enabled.  This site also bears some review.  If you get a chance you can find many, many blogs off the Computers and Technology section off Yahoo.Com.  Just select the technology weblogs selection and be prepared to be there for awhile, there is just so much to read. On a final note, we have had really lousy success with our blog at Charter this month and we will be giving it one more shot this month.  It is going on a full fledged web server running a copy of Windows 2003 Web edition.  I hope for everyone's sake that this system stays up and remains stable for the most part.  There are four very important blogs running on this system and we need to get this back in good shape for the start of the school year.  Jim, just keep the faith.  Till next time. 8:46:56 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Had a chance to digest some of the weeks items and two very distinct and interesting items of note came to pass this week and they are worth writing about.  The first is about knowledge and or perceived knowledge.  Say your put in a position within your job function that forces you to make decisions and or give substantial input about a particular project or a purchase or just anything.  You have the job right, so you must have the necessary knowledge to go along with that job, right?  What if you don't or you find yourself have been on the coat-tails of some folks who did know and now maybe you might have to fend for yourself in a very dangerous pool of possible choices.  What to do?  If you have put yourself in the latter position than the more anxiety the better, your getting what you deserve.  If perhaps you have gotten either acolades or press of some kind that you really did not deserve or someone else has actually done the work and while you may have not taken direct credit for the work you didn't let anyone know you really didn't do it either.  Once again, the more pain you get from this situation, the better.  Your a fraud and a leech of the worst kind.  In the past twenty-five years of work I have known more of these leeches and less of the stalwart or stand-up individual that can give credit where it is due.  I will tell you that I have found far less in the work environment I am presently in than at any other time in my work history.  I think it has something to do with accolades coinciding with money instead of just praise for praise sake.  If, however, you have been thrust into a situation that now requires you to "work outside of your paradigm" well here's some words of advice.  Solicit opinions from people that have done it or have enabled it to be done.  Whatever the task is, this doesn't just lend itself to technology projects.  Even if you don't like an individual for whatever reason, if they are good at what they do, talk to them.  If you do know something pretend to know nothing.  Be willing to spend countless hours at least learning the language of the trade you are now trying to ply.  Don't play stupid, just listen and you will learn.  I have spent time in work functions as a procedures analyst and I will tell you that practically anything is "learnable".  I sure that heart surgury is in a book somewhere and while after I have brushed up on it a bit you may not want me to operate on you, I could at least learn the vocabulary and be able to discuss it with the person that is going to operate.  ( I would like to operate on something someday but that's another story).  My point being that if the people you are asking for help notice that you are trying to learn they will be more ready to help you than if they think you are not putting in your share of the labor.  I have never refused anyone help that I thought was genuinely seeking legitimate help and not at either my expense or my organization's expense.  I learned from someone more than a few but none of them could ever say that I wasn't willing to sweat the small stuff when it came to putting in time on a project.  Back to my original vein, you can't fault someone who has been put in a situation that they may have no control over but if they managed to put themselves there by deceit or slight of hand and now don't know what to do shame on them.   The other point of interest is a bit harder to explain.  I am and always will be an infrastructure guy.  I have, when given the chance, overbuilt every infrastructure project I have ever been associated with.  If you don't put a solid chasis under the car it won't matter what size tires or how big the engine is, sometime its going to give and you'll be spending quite a bit putting it back together.  I also have this bent due to the fact that this is what I learned from the beginning.  Early on in my work life I was involved in more of these type of projects than either software of operating systems or whatever.  I liked the infrastructure work and it showed.  I still can spend hours on a simple network design and drawing and just rush around an operating system project or software work in general.  The point I'm making with this is that while my skills were honed with wire and layouts other guys have been more exposed to either software systems or basic levels of equipment of sorts.  What is interesting is when you do get together with a group that has diverse backgrounds and you can take a step back and watch the interaction as the baton is handed from one to another with regard to the "floor".  I had the chance to witness this a few times this week and it is truly amazing to see how each individual can move the direction of the conversation to encompass their skill sets.  What was more interesting is to watch those individuals described in my first thoughts (the leeches) try to steer clear of any real sort of discussions regarding anything that may require them to comment on.  Talk about squirming.  Talk to you later. 8:23:55 PM    comment []

Sunday, July 11, 2004

I wanted to start off the new phase of this weblog with more tech and I promise that will be the case.  I had pushed everyone to get some of the smaller projects out of the way as to concentrate on the new Media Center systems but it still looks as if I will not get them done before the start of the school year.  I am beginning to order the furniture but I still can't seem to get the PO's out of the business office for the live of me.  I was ok with last year's orders but have not been able to get the 05 orders pushed through.  I realize that we are down to one person processing the requests but that isn't my fault and it is setting back the work quite a bit.  There was talk of putting another person on for the remainder of the summer but I don't know what happened to that prospect.  I have already passed the drop dead date for the furniture off the GSA contract to reach us in time.  I needed about six weeks lead time to get things started especially on the fitted furniture.  Those orders should have been out two weeks ago.  So much for progress. I spent most of the weekend getting ready for the two biggest weeks of the summer work schedules and what I have found out is that I am slightly behind where I thought I would be at the end of this week.  I imagine that the work will have to continue at Chartertech this week.  I will Jonathan mounting the projectors as well as some of the screens for the next eight rooms that we will be doing.  He is basically finished the maintenance level for the entire building except for the TV studio and some of the Animation machines.  We also have some work to do in the Theatre Arts center as well.  I should have the first twenty-five machines set up next week as well.   The workstations are performing as we thought they would.  The speed and processing power are acceptable.  What I really needed was a good solid Internet presence for each classroom.  I thought that this would be a more simpler summer that previously but no such luck.  I will post again on Monday night so that a full update will be possible including some work on the Electrical project at Galloway. 4:26:51 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 08, 2004

As you may have noticed, I dumped most or all of my previous posts in the transfer of the weblog to this new machine.  I have some of them stored but they were not of much value in keeping with the flow of what the direction of my writing is now taking.  I am going to keep talking about the summer schedule that we are completing at both locations.  I have neglected to discuss the work that is going on at Charter but suffice it to say that my youngest son is handling it so far.  There was a large amount of "dirty work" that was necessary to the cause and needed to be accomplished in the first three weeks of the summer.  He really did a good job in getting the majority of this type of work done and done right.  I have been impressed with his ability to figure it out as he goes along.  I will work on Charter this Friday.  See ya then. 9:15:13 PM    comment []

Made good progress on several projects this week even though it was a short one.  Also I have been able to push the vendors hard on the delivery side of each project.  Pieces of each project are arriving daily and they are staying just ahead of the workers by the slightest of margins.  Once again, when the schedule works out it appears that all cylinders are firing when in fact there may be a misfire sure to come and soon.   I had hoped to be a bit further on the Middle School by the end of this week but I will settle for where we are at for now.  The big push will be when we get the storage array into the tech center and fully install the last of the servers which in fact will control our Middle School systems for what I hope is the next five years without reconfiguration of any sorts.  I am hoping that this will go in next week as well as the first fifteen projectors and document cameras at the Middle School.  I will decide what is up with the schedule after we meet on Monday to determine our goals for the week.  As it stands to really make an impact on the process we will have to accomplish approximately twice as work as was accomplished during the four day period of this week.  Remember, I am not starting anything after August 15th that will not be completed by the start of the school year.  This will include the library work that is slated to be done this summer.  I still have not gotten the necessary purchase orders released for most of the items that are needed to complete this work.  I can only do so much.  I will get those projects to the ready as soon as I can.  I have enlisted Ben Fong's help with the Music Project and we will order the software in a combined worksession on Monday of next week.  Should be interesting having someone help that has more than a passing interest in the system.  This is really the second step in my personal plan and that is the introduction of project involvement with the actual project users and participants.  Many years ago when I received my "formal" systems training I spent two years learning how to make information flow from one process to another.  At that time it took several iterations just to bring data to the top of the stack in order to perform an action upon it.  Once a course of action was determined I would then convert the procedures written up by the systems analyst into system software.  That used to be a  very tedious and tiresome job.  As my career progressed from programmer to lead programmer and into project management I discovered I knew less and less about what I was doing with regard to actually getting a useable product into the client's hands than they did.  Eventually I turned toward more pure systems work and concentrated primarily on operating systems and their support.  What I did learn from that experience was that involving the user to a large extent can ensure that at least a partial amount of success is capable with a systems project.  Which leads me to the lesson for tonight.  Fully involve your users especially those that can help you in all phases of the project.  I will keep you posted on my progress with this latest attempt.  On another note, I am breaking down some equipment in the offices and I will not be heard from for at least three days while I replace and rebuild my writing machines.  I have some voice recognition systems equipment and software that I have conducting a review on and I need to get things set up to do just that.  Until next time. 8:51:21 PM    comment [ 0] 9:09:26 PM    comment []

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